The abolition of slavery occurred at different times in different countries, and sometimes occurred sequentially in more than one stage: for example, as abolition of the trade in slaves in a specific country, and then as abolition of slavery throughout empires. Each step was usually the result of a separate law or action. This timeline shows abolition laws or actions listed chronologically.

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3rd century BC: Ashoka abolishes slave trade and encourages people to treat slaves well but does not abolish slavery itself in the Maurya Empire, covering the majority of India, which was under his rule.[1]

221-206 BC: The Qin Dynasty's measures to eliminate the landowning aristocracy include the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a free peasantry who owed taxes and labor to the state. They also discouraged serfdom.[2] The dynasty was overthrown in 206 BC and many of its laws were overturned.

17: Wang Mang, first and only emperor of the Xin Dynasty, usurped the Chinese throne and instituted a series of sweeping reforms, including the abolition of slavery and radical land reform. After his death in 23 C.E., slavery was reinstituted.[3][4]

1200: Slavery virtually disappears in Japan; it was never widespread and mostly involved captives taken in civil wars.[6]

1214: The Statute of the Town of Korčula (today in Croatia) abolishes slavery.[7]

1215: Magna Carta signed. Clause 30, commonly known as Habeas Corpus, would form the basis of a law against slavery in English common law.

~1220: The Sachsenspiegel, the most influential German code of law from the Middle Ages, condemns slavery as a violation of God's likeness to man.[8]

1256: The Liber Paradisus is promulgated. The Comune di Bologna abolishes slavery and serfdom and releases all the serfs in its territories.

1274: Landslov (Land's Law) in Norway mentions only former slaves, which indicates that slavery was abolished in Norway

1315: Louis X, king of France, publishes a decree proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and that any slave setting foot on the French ground should be freed.[9] However slavery continued till the 17th century along France's Mediterranean coastline, the Provence.[10]

1335: Sweden (including Finland at the time) makes slavery illegal. An abolition of slaves setting foot on Swedish ground does not occur until 1813.[11] (In the 18th and 19th Centuries, slavery would be practiced in the Swedish ruled Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy.)

1368: China's Hongwu Emperor establishes the Ming dynasty and would abolish all forms of slavery.[3] However, slavery continued in the Ming dynasty. Later Ming rulers, as a way of limiting slavery in the absence of a prohibition, passed a decree that limited the number of slaves that could be held per household and extracted a severe tax from slave owners.[13]

1435: In Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugene IV banned enslavement of Christians in the Canary Islands on pain of excommunication.[14] However the non-Christian indigenous Guanches could be and were enslaved during the Spanish conquest.[10]

1537: Pope Paul III forbids slavery of the indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as of any other new population that would be discovered, indicating their right to freedom and property. However, only Catholic countries apply it, and state that they cannot possibly enforce what happens in the distant colonies (Sublimus Dei).

1723–1730: China's Yongzheng emancipation sought to free all slaves to strengthen the autocratic ruler through a kind of social leveling that created an undifferentiated class of free subjects under the throne. Although these new regulations freed the vast majority of slaves, wealthy families continued to use slave labor into the twentieth century.[13]

1761, 12 February: Portugal abolishes slavery[24] in mainland Portugal and in Portuguese possessions in India through a decree by the Marquis of Pombal.

1772: Somersett's case held that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain. This case was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England and Wales, and emancipated the remaining ten to fourteen thousand slaves or possible slaves in England and Wales, who were mostly domestic servants.[25]

1774: Laws of the Marquis of Pombal, prime minister of King José I, prohibiting the transport of black slaves to Portugal and the liberation of the children of slaves born in Portugal.[clarification needed]

1780: Pennsylvania passes An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, freeing future children of slaves. Those born prior to the Act remain enslaved for life. The Act becomes a model for other Northern states. Last slaves freed 1847.[31]

1804: New Jersey begins a gradual abolition of slavery, freeing future children of slaves.[35] Those born prior to the Act remain enslaved for life. The process later becomes complete with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

1806: In a message to Congress, US President Thomas Jefferson calls for criminalizing the international slave trade, asking Congress to "withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights … which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe."

1807: The British begin patrols of African coast to arrest slaving vessels. The West Africa Squadron (Royal Navy) is established to suppress slave trading; by 1865, nearly 150,000 people freed by anti-slavery operations.[44]

1807: In Michigan Territory, Judge Augustus Woodward denies the return of two slaves owned by a man in Windsor, Upper Canada (present day Ontario). Woodward declares that any man "coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman."[45]

1811: The First National Congress of Chile approves a proposal drafted by Manuel de Salas that declares the Freedom of wombs, which sets free the sons of slaves born on Chilean territory, no matter the conditions of the parents; it prohibited the slave trade and recognized as freedmen those who, passing in transit through Chilean territory, stayed there for six months.

1813: In Argentina, the Law of Wombs was passed on 2 February, by the Assembly of Year XIII. The law stated that those born after 31 January 1813 would be granted freedom when contracting matrimony, or on their 16th birthday for women and 20th for men, and upon their manumission would be given land and tools to work it.

1814: Uruguay, before its independence, declares all those born of slaves in their territories are free from that day forward.

1830: Mexican president Anastasio Bustamante orders the abolition of slavery to be implemented also in Mexican Texas. To circumvent the law, Anglo colonists convert their slaves into "indentured servants for life".[53]

1830: The first Constitution of Uruguay declares the abolition of slavery.

1831: Brazil adopts the Law of 7 November 1831, declaring the maritime slave trade abolished, prohibiting any form of importation of slaves, and granting freedom to slaves should they be illegally imported into Brazil. In spite of its adoption, the law was seldom enforced prior to 1850, when Brazil, under British pressure, adopted additional legislation to criminalize the importation of slaves.

1834: The British Slavery Abolition Act comes into force, abolishing slavery throughout most of the British Empire. Legally frees 700,000 in West Indies, 20,000 in Mauritius, and 40,000 in South Africa. The exceptions, territories controlled by the East India Company and Ceylon, were liberated in 1843 when they became part of the British Empire.[54]

1850: Brazil, under British pressure, adopts the Eusébio de Queiróz Act (Law 581 of 4 September 1850), criminalizing the maritime slave trade as piracy, and imposing other criminal sanctions on the importation of slaves (already prohibited in law since 1831).

1869, February, 27th: Portugal: King Louis I signs a decree of the government, chaired by the Marquis Sá da Bandeira, abolishing slavery in all Portuguese territories. Accordingly, all slaves in the Portuguese colonies in Africa were set free, resulting in the total termination of slavery across the Portuguese Empire.

1871: Brazil: Rio Branco Law (Law of Free Birth) declares free the sons and daughters born to slave mothers after 28 September 1871.[71]

1873: Slavery abolished in the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico: March 22nd.

1885: Brazil passes Sexagenarians Law (Saraiva-Cotegipe Act), freeing all slaves over the age of 60, and creating other measures for the gradual abolition of slavery, such as a Manumissions Fund administered by the State.

1888, 13 May: Brazil enacts the Golden Law, decreeing the total abolition of slavery with immediate effect, without indemnities to slaveowners, but also without providing for any aid to newly freed former slaves.[74]

1890: Brussels Conference Act – a collection of anti-slavery measures to put an end to the slave trade on land and sea, especially in the Congo Basin, the Ottoman Empire, and the East African coast.

1894: Korea officially abolishes slavery, but it survives in practice until 1930.[75]

1928: Domestic slavery practised by local African elites abolished in Sierra Leone.[83] Though established as a place for freed slaves, a study found practices of domestic slavery still widespread in rural areas in the 1970s.